Lancashire's textile industry has won an unexpected Brexit boost as one of Britain’s largest providers of workers’ uniforms has brought manufacturing back to the UK.

Alsico had been buying fabric from Italy, but the slump in the value of the pound drove up its costs and the contract has been transferred to Bolton fabric company Carrington Workwear, whose fabrics go into uniforms for McDonald’s and the British Army.

Alsico makes 75,000 uniforms a week and the contract is worth around £10 million a year for the 125-year-old Carrington, boosting employee numbers by almost 15 per cent.

‘Today, a plant in the UK can be as efficient at making fabric as anywhere in the world,’ he added.

Carrington sales director Neil Davey said: ‘This is our single biggest contract and I was very pleased when we won it. It happened very quickly. They decided in December and we started in February. It’s all gone very smoothly.’

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Alsico’s decision to move fabric manufacture back to the UK comes even though its Italian supplier had worked with the company for 50 years. But sterling’s weakness made Alsico reconsider its options.

Alsico’s biggest single customer is Johnson Service Group, which rents out workwear to companies across the country.

...but a big City jobs drain begins

The jobs market in the City of London is ‘under stress’ as firms have begun to move posts to the Continent, according to specialist recruitment agency Morgan McKinley.

The number of City jobs available fell by almost a quarter in February compared with the previous month and was down by 17 per cent on the same period last year, the agency said.

'Under stress': The number of City jobs available fell by 17% compared to last year

Hakan Enver, operations director for Morgan McKinley’s financial services division, said some firms were running out of patience with the Government.

‘Brexit has pushed institutions into two camps. On the one side we’ve got the “business as usual” team, and on the other we have the institutions that are tired of the Government’s hemming and hawing and have already begun to move jobs to other EU countries. It’s the latter group that has contributed to the quarter drop in jobs available,’ said Enver.

The agency’s figures showed 6,945 jobs available in the City in February, down from just over 9,000 in January and 8,325 in February 2016. Last week, investment bank Goldman Sachs said it would relocate hundreds of jobs out of London as part of its contingency plans for the UK leaving the European Union.

Enver said Article 50 could actually produce an uptick in hiring as the outlook became clearer, but that the long-term trend would be downwards.

‘The data suggests that Brexit has had a fundamental depressing effect on City jobs. We’ve already witnessed what was a handful of jobs leaving become hundreds. How long before we are looking at losing thousands?’

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